


Gender Is Intangible, But Tater Tots Are Forever

by symbioteboyfriend



Category: Venom (Movie 2018)
Genre: Gender Neutral Venom Symbiote (Marvel), Gender-Neutral Pronouns, I Wrote This Instead of Sleeping, M/M, Nonbinary Character, Nonbinary!Venom, Trans Male Character, Trans!Eddie Brock, oh god it's 4 am i'm going to bed
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-26
Updated: 2018-10-26
Packaged: 2019-08-07 19:56:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,717
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16414916
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/symbioteboyfriend/pseuds/symbioteboyfriend
Summary: Turns out symbiotes don't really have a concept of gender. Venom looks to Eddie for an explanation.





	Gender Is Intangible, But Tater Tots Are Forever

**Author's Note:**

> The comments on my other fic were so nice I started this one right away! This is the fic I had in mind when I made this account; hope y'all like it! (As always, I draw from my own personal understanding of transness and nonbinary identity, and that doesn't represent everyone's interpretations.)

 

“Fuck,” Eddie exhaled. “I fuckin’ hate stairs.” He pressed his shoulder into the wall and leaned on it wearily. “And this fried chicken is _heavy_. Did you really need two chocolate milkshakes, Venom?”

 **Chocolate is important.** Venom replied sagely. **You should be glad it’s comparable to the taste of your liver.** **Speaking of which... keep walking. We’re not in the apartment yet, and we’re _starving_.**

Eddie raised his eyebrow at the empty air in the hallway. “Uh huh. You’re worse than Anne’s cat. You ate two assholes harassing a homeless lady less than 36 hours ago.”

**_We_ ** **ate two assholes, Eddie.**

“There is no way,” Eddie huffed as he lugged the food to his door, “that you absolutely had to say it like that.” He unlocked the door, slammed it shut with his elbow, and threw his keys in the direction of the couch. “Since you can fix us when we get hurt, why can’t you give me a physique like yours? I could Dwayne Johnson the shit out of journalism.”

**That’s not how it works. And it’s _our_ physique. Our body is always perfect.**

“Maybe. Sure would be nice if it was easier to walk up stairs though.” He dropped the box of fried chicken onto the table and gingerly set the three chocolate milkshakes—three! The restaurant employee had looked at him like he was insane—down next to it. Eddie then collapsed across the nearby couch and flung his arm over his face as if to swoon.

“God, what a day. Running around to track down that guy selling tainted bratwursts from a food truck and we had to follow him back to the meat-packing place he was gettin’ ‘em from. Good thing the cops got there in time.”

**We could have handled all of them.**

“Oh sure, would have been a real party.” Eddie swung his legs down to the floor and began to stand up.

**... A sausage party.**

He stopped in his tracks. “That- why- was that _necessary?_ You’ve never even seen that movie.”

**It was, and yes we have. Do we still have tater tots in the freezer?**

Eddie rolled his eyes. “Of course, buddy. It’s gonna take a few minutes to heat ‘em up though.”

Four minutes and thirty seconds later, tater tot plate in hand, Eddie sat back down on the couch and put the plate on the table for Venom. Their head appeared out of his arm, shining like a gelatinous orca. But deadlier. And with sharper teeth.

Venom probably would like penguins, Eddie mused silently. They were smaller than humans, but that would just make them easier to eat. He resolved not think about it too much, because he didn’t want to avoid zoos for the rest of his life. As he reached for a piece of fried chicken, he watched Venom devour all of the tater tots and move on to their first milkshake. 

He bit into the chicken, savoring the crispy skin and perfectly greasy meat. God. If this was how Venom felt when they bit off people’s heads, he could almost see the appeal.

 **Eddie, what is gender?**  

He coughed in an effort to keep from simultaneously spitting the chicken out and choking on it. “What the fuck?”

Venom looked up from where they were drinking the second milkshake and pushed the straw around in a fidgety motion. **Gender. What is it? We know it’s important. It’s why we need to take testosterone. It’s why Anne is different from us and Dan. But it doesn’t make sense.**

“Uh.” Eddie sipped on his milkshake in an effort to stall. “That’s not an easy question to answer.”

**Shouldn’t we know? We’ve thought about this more than most people do, haven’t we?**

“That’s definitely true. But that doesn’t mean we understand it completely. A long time ago, before we met... I was young, seventeen I think, when I started realizing I was a guy. But it wasn’t like I got struck by a lightning bolt that gave me a gender studies degree. I just realized that I related to a lot of what trans guys go through, and that I wanted what they had.” Eddie stared at the side of the milkshake cup and rubbed at the stubble growing on his jaw. “I started dressing a bit different, picked my name, eventually got on hormones, and it just felt right.”

 **And we had... “top surgery”?** If Venom hadn’t been busy using their tentacles to hold food, they would have done air quotes. Eddie could practically see them anyway; he could feel Venom _thinking_ them.

“And we had top surgery.”

**That’s not helpful. What is a “guy”? Why don’t you humans know what gender means?**

“We do know what it means, we just—” Eddie gestured with his milkshake to indicate the rough outline of a box. “We like to understand ourselves as part of groups. Humans are always describing themselves to the world, but also looking at how they describe themselves to decide who they are. So gender is like that. We create it as we look to it for meaning.” He sipped from the milkshake again. “Does that mean symbiotes don’t have genders?”

**Symbiotes don’t need them. We have had hosts who have something similar, but human gender is complicated.**

“You have, or other symbiotes have?”

**Both.**

“Ok. So, pronouns then.” He tipped his cup so the straw was pointing towards him. “I’m only okay with people calling me ‘he’ or ‘him’, because that’s part of what my gender means for me.” The cup tilted toward Venom. “English has gender-neutral pronouns that some people use...”

Venom was in the process of removing the lid to their milkshake cup and dumping the rest of it directly in their mouth. 

“That’s gross.”

**You’re gross.**

“We’re gross, Venom. But anyway. I’ve mostly been using ‘they’ and ‘them’ to refer to you when I talk about you with Anne or Dan. Are you okay with that?”

**Indifferent. Those pronouns are acceptable.**

“Okay...Does it bother you that Anne and Dan call you a he?”

**No, because that’s what we are.**

“Well, that’s what I am.” Eddie set his empty cup down and reached for another piece of chicken. “When they talk about you as in,” he trailed off as he tore off a bite and swallowed, “...as in the part of you that is not me. Are you alright with them saying ‘he’ if they’re referring to you as a symbiote?”

**Yes? It doesn’t matter. I exist, and we exist, regardless of what others want to call me. If it’s easier for them, why should we care? We can just eat them if they piss us off.**

“We are not eating Dan.”

**We might eat Dan.**

“We will not. He did not know the MRI machine would hurt us.”

**Pussy.**

“You are what you...no, it’s not worth it. So you really don’t have any preference for your own pronouns?”

**Being called ‘they’ makes more sense. The only reason we have a connection to gender at all is because of you, Eddie. But the pronouns you like are fine.**

Eddie wiped the grease off his fingers with a napkin from the chicken box. “I’ll keep using they/them for you then. If you want, I can tell Anne and Dan to stop calling you ‘he’. You don’t have to be okay with it just because that’s what I’m used to.”

**You misunderstand. Your pronouns are good, too. _We_ are Venom. That means your gender and your pronouns are part of us. Even if we don’t fully understand them. When people use the word ‘he’ for me, it’s because they think I’m like you. They know we’re connected.**

“That’s actually really sweet, Venom. You’re saying you like it because you want people to see how close we are?”

 **Yes.** Venom wound one of their tentacles around Eddie’s forearm and squeezed. **We are very close.**

He smiled slowly, the corners of his mouth twitching. “Couldn’t be closer. Do you want any of the chicken? There’s a lot left.”

 **No. Can we make more tater tots?** Venom extended their tongue past their teeth in anticipation.

“Are you- are you _drooling_ over tater tots?” Eddie laughed breathlessly. “We can have more later. I don’t wanna get up from the couch yet.” He saw Venom begin to recede back into his arm. “No, no, don’t pout. I said later, not never.”

**Fine. You have more questions for me, don’t you? I can hear them.**

“Yeah, I do. If you had to pick a word that described how you relate to human gender, do you know what it would be? Does agender make sense, or nonbinary? Or do you not have the context for what those mean?” 

 **Hmm...** Eddie felt the peculiar sensation of someone flipping through a photo album, but inside his own head. **Don’t know if agender is right. It means not having any connection to gender at all?**

“That seems like a decent summary.”

**That’s not how we feel. We have you.**

“How does nonbinary sound, then?”

**That might work. Separate from the binary of human gender. But not fully removed from it. It sounds more vague than agender.**

“Agender identity is included under the umbrella of nonbinary identity. So, yeah, nonbinary could be a more vague term. You like it?”

 **Yes, it’s a good word.** Venom shrank back into Eddie’s body until only the tendrils encircling his arm remained. **We’re tired. More tater tots, and then sleep.**

“You don’t even want to eat them yourself? You’re getting pretty lazy.” Eddie chuckled.

**A symbiote is only as strong as their host.**

“Dick.” Eddie pushed himself up in the direction of the kitchen, bringing the chicken leftovers with him.

**You like it.**

“Sure, it’s great, don’t care much for your sass though.”

**It’s lame to laugh at your own jokes, Eddie.**

“We’re losers, you said it yourself. I like laughing at my own jokes.” Eddie yawned and put the chicken in the fridge. He started to reach for the freezer door, but stopped as Venom extended a tentacle to whip it open and grab the tater tots. “I know you’re eager, but I can’t eat them frozen, so we’re still going to put them in the toaster oven. Four and a half minutes isn’t forever.”


End file.
